A few words of Swamy Vivekananda about Ideal Womanhood:
The great Aryans, Budha among the rest have always put woman in an equal position with man. For them sex in religion did not exist. In the Vedas and Upanishads, women taught the highest truths and received the same veneration as men.
There is no chance for the welfare of the world unless the condition of women is improved. It is not possible for a bird to fly on only one wing.
If you do not allow one to become a lion, he will become a fox. Women are a power, only now it is more for evil because man oppresses woman; she is the fox, but when she is no longer oppressed, she will become the lion.
The best thermometer to the progress of a nation is its treatment of its women.
In ancient Greece there was absolutely no difference in the state of man and woman. The idea of perfect equality existed. No Hindu can be a priest until he is married, the idea being that a single man is only half a man, and imperfect. The idea of perfect womanhood is perfect independence. The central ideal of the life of a modern Hindu lady is her chastity. The wife is the centre of a circle, the fixity of which depends upon her chastity. It was the extreme of this idea which caused Hindu widows to be burnt. The Hindu women are very spiritual and very religious, perhaps more so than any other women in the world. If we can preserve these beautiful characteristics and at the same time develop the intellects of our women, the Hindu woman of the future will the ideal woman of the world.
At the present time God should be worshipped as "Mother", the Infinite Energy. This will lead to purity, and tremendous energy will come here. Woman has suffered for aeons, and that has given her infinite patience and infinite persevarance. She holds on to an idea. It is this which makes her the support of even superstitious religions and of the priests in every land, and it is this that will free her. We have to become Vedantists and this grand thought; the masses must get it. In India these ideas were brought out by individuals like Budha, Shankara and others, but the masses did not retain them. The new cycle must see the masses living Vedanta, and this will have to come through women.
"Keep the beloved beautiful Mother in the heart of your hearts with all care."
"Throw out everything but the tongue, keep that to say, 'Mother,Mother!'"
"Let no evil counsellors enter; let you and me, my heart, alone see Mother."
"Thou art beyond all that lives!"
"My Moon of life, my Soul of Soul!"
Without Shakti (Mother) there is no regeneration for the world. Why is it that our country is the weakest and the most backward of all coutries? Because Shakti is held in dishonour there. Mother has been born to revive that wonderful Shakti in India; and making her the nucleus, once more will Gargis and Maitreyis be born in the world. What do i find in America and Europe? the worship of Shakti, the worship of Power. Yet they worship Her ignorantly through some sense gratification. Imagine, then, what a lot of good they will achieve who will worship Her with all purity, in a Sattvika spirit, looking upon Her as their mother. First Mother and her daughters, then Father and his sons-- can you understand this?... To me, Mother's grace is a hundered thousand times more valuable than Father's. Mother's grace, Mother's blessings are all paramount to me...
"I know that the race that produced Sita even it only dreamt of her-has a reverence for woman that is unmatched on the earth.
"Have our women any problems at all? Of course, they have grave problems, but none that are not to be solved by that magic word education. The true education, however is not yet conceived of amongst us."
"Still it may be described as a development of faculty, not an accumulation of words, or as training of individuals to will rightly and efficiently. So shall we bring to the need of India grat fearless women--women worthy to Ahalya Bai, and Mira Bai-women fit to be mothers of heroes, because they are pure and selfless, strong with the strength that comes of touching the feet of God."
"I should very much like our women to have intellectuality, but not if it must be at the cost of purity. Intellectuality is not the highest good. Morality and spirituality are the things for which we strive. Our women are not so learned, but they are more pure."
To all women every man save her husband should be as her son. To all men every women save his own wife should be as his mother. Not until you learn to ignore the question of sex and to meet on a ground of common humanity will women really develop. Until then they are playthings, nothing more. All this is the cause of divorce. Your men bow low and offer a chair, but in another breath they offer compliments. They say, Oh, madam, how beautiful are your eyes! What right have they do to do this? How dare a man venture so far, and how can your women permit it? Such things develop the less noble side humanity. They do not tend to nobler ideals.
We should not think that we are men and women, but only that we are human beings, born to cherish and to help one another, No sooner are a young man and young woman left alone than he pays compliments to her, and perhaps before he takes a wife he has courted two hundered women.

When I was in India and saw these things from the outside I was told it was all right, it was mere pleasantry, and i believed it. But I have travelled since then, and I know it is not right. It is wrong, only you of the West shut your eyes and call it good. The trouble with the nations of the West is that they are young, foolish, fickle and wealthy. What mischief can come of one of these qualities, but when all these three, all four, are combined, beware!
The worship of woman (Shakti) is not lust, but is that Shakti-Puja, that worship of the Kumari and the Sadhava (the married woman whose husband is living), which is done on Varanasi, Kalighat and other holy places. Foremost is the woman's state, foremost is her dress, her seat, her food, her wants and her comforts; the first honours in all respects are accorded to her. Not to speak of the nobleborn, not to speak of the young and the fair, it is the worship of any and every woman, be she and acquaintance or a stranger.
Rama gave up his body and joined Sita in the other world.
Sita-the pure, the pure, the all-suffering! Sita is the name in India for everything that is good, pure, and holy; everything that in woman we call woman.
Sita-the patient, all suffering, ever-faithful, ever-pure wife! Through all the suffering she had, there was not one harsh word against Rama. Sita never returned injury. Be Sita!
If an Indian woman in Indian dress preach the religion which fell from the lips of the Rishis of India-I see a prophetic vision-there will rise a great wave which will inundate the whole Western world. Will there be no woman in the Land of Maitreyi, Khana, Lilavati, Savitri, and Ubhayabharati, who will venture to do this?
Liberty is the first condition of growth. It is wrong, a thousan time wrong, if any of you dares to say,"I will work out the salvation of this woman or child". Who are you to solve women's problems? Are you the Lord God that you should rule over every widow and every woman? Hands Off! They will solve their own problems.
Women must be put in a position to solve their own problems in their own way. No one can or ought to do this for them. And our own Indian women are as capable of doing it as any in the world.
Do you think women like Gargi, Khana or Lilavathi don't exist now in the country? Still on this sacred soil of India, this land of Sita and Savitri, among women may be found such character, such spirit of service, such affection, compassion, contentment and reverence, as I could not find anywhere else in the world! In India alone the sight of feminine modesty and reserve soothes the eye! With such materials of great promise, you could not, alas, work out their uplift! For if they get the right sort of education, they may well turn out to be the ideal women in the world. With such an education women will solve their own problems. They have all the time been trained in helplessness, servile dependence on others, and so they are good only to weep their eyes out at the slightest approach of a mishap or danger. Along with others they should acquire the spirit of valour and heroism. In the present day it has become necessary for them also to learn self-defence. See how grand was the Queen of Jhansi!
I shall not rest till I root out this distinction of sex. Is there any sex-distinction in the Atman? Out with the differentiation between men and women-all is Atman! Give up the identification with the body and stand up! Say, ASTHI, ASTHI "Everything is!"- cherish positive thoughts.

From a Western viewpoint this only reinforces the viewpoint that religion is the favored tyranny of small minds. Whether it's fundamentalist Christians trying to control the actions of others or fundamentalists Muslims doing the same thing in different ways, it's always a movement of fatally flawed people trying to force their own personal interpretation of "God's word" on others. There is really nothing more pathetic than that.